Forum:Merger With The Sims Wiki Discussion
A Little Background As some of you may know, we've recently been approached by the admins of The Sims Wiki with a request for a merger. You can read the full details here The Sims Social Wiki talk:Community Portal. I'm curious to see what everyone else thinks about this option. I've listed my thoughts below, feel free to agree/disagree with anything I've said. Mndarrr (talk) 23:37, August 17, 2012 (UTC) Comments I have several concerns about going through with a merger, namely that the content for this particular game will get mixed in with many of the other Sims games, and it may be less user friendly. As it stands now, we've got easy menu access to all the major moving parts of our game and we don't have to sift through several layers of content to find what we're looking for. We've got constantly evolving new updates and items and characters (we share many of these wit other games) and quest lines, and in the end my biggest concern is that our community gets easy access to what they need. I think the basic structure and layout of The Sims Wiki (as it exists now) would not be beneficial for players looking strictly for Sims Social content. The new weekly game content for the Sims Social makes a merger like this more unusual than other wiki mergers I've seen in the past, and all the hours of merger formatting aside - I'm just not convinced this would be the best move for the community. That said, being a part of their wiki would give our wiki a boost in page traffic. But we're already listed in the top google searches for Sims Social, and we've had pages/images plagiarized by The Sims Social Fansite several times now. In addition to that, we're actively linked in several different facebook Sims Social groups on a weekly basis. What do you guys think about a merger? Mndarrr (talk) 23:37, August 17, 2012 (UTC) My opinion I really don't think merging with The Sims Wiki is a good idea. Just like Mndarrr said above, we will lose the layout and structure of the current Wiki which makes it easy to navigate. The Sims Social Wiki is good and I like it the way it is. Usfun8991 (talk) 23:57, August 17, 2012 (UTC) I don't think merging is good too. Blessgify (talk) 04:20, August 18, 2012 (UTC) For me.. its better to leave THE SIMS SOCIAL WIKI as it is.... no need to merge.. below is my several observations: 1. We, esspecially Mndarrr already put a lot of work to do this.. 2. The less traffic is the most people prefer to go.. 3. The easier layout clicker is a better to help people.. 4. Let it be spesific, not interrupting with other kind of sims. 5. THE SIMS SOCIAL WIKI already on the top of the google searches as been mention by Mndrrr and it is true, i already check it just now. However.. If the final decision is we rejected their (THE SIMS WIKI) proposal, we need to close it in the good way, therefore nobody will get hurt. and also if we going to accept to be merged with them, then we need to come out with some term so that our right will be remained. Thats all my opinion, hope it can help you to make the decision Mndrrr.. =) Cindy Green (talk) I Agree I honestly don't think we should merge for the same reasons mentioned above. We're getting enough publicity as it is. Honestly out of all the other sims social websites, ours has the most info on it. It's updated more frequently and kept current. We've all worked hard to keep it that way (especially Mndarrr! ) Besides, it takes time to learn the codes and formats. It would be a set back having to make adjustments, learning new formats to fit theirs, not to mention it's nice having a website specifially for The Sims Social, with that info separate from the other sim games. forgivenmuch (talk) *Added footnote: I will add however, that on the flip side I do highly respect them for coming to us and ASKING for our permission to add our gathered research/info to their website. They could have decided instead to be like Sims Social Fansite and copy/plageriarize our work. So if not for anything else, I would be open to considering their offer based on the honesty/integrity they have displayed on that note forgivenmuch (talk) Yeah, being recognized at all by them is a huge honor. They've been doing this stuff for ages and they're all experts. That's part of the reason it is so tempting to merge in the first place. There is an overwhelming consensus in the facebook comments we've gotten that a merger wouldn't benefit our community enough to go through with it, but I really want to make sure we've got all the voices participating. Mndarrr (talk) 03:54, August 18, 2012 (UTC) Affiliation instead of a merge? So Mndarrr and I were discussing this a bit on facebook and came up with another possible solution. We could suggest an affiliation instead of a merge. In other words when users go to Sims Wiki researching information for Sims Social, their website could redirect to ours. And vice versa, if users come to The Sims Social Wiki, researching info on any of the other Sims games, our website could redirect to theirs. The point of course would be to make our info available from their website, while still keeping the information separate. Not only would that limit the amount of work necessary from the editors of both websites (they would have our info available on their website without having to add it AND without us having to move it all over there) but it would also prevent the issues of having Sims Social game info mixed in with the other Sim games. Thoughts/comments? forgivenmuch (talk) :My name is LostInRiverview, and I'm an administrator/bureaucrat over on The Sims Wiki. Pardon me for intruding here on this community discussion, but I wanted to make you all aware that the idea of affiliation instead of merger has been discussed on our wiki as well. Given the response to the merger idea, I think that pursuing affiliation would be the best way to go, is it appears as if that's the idea that is getting the most support on The Sims Wiki. I want to make it clear that the community on TSW only wants to pursue a merger if your community is in favor of it - since that's not the case, we should keep the door open to other options, including affiliation. -- LiR speak ~ read 18:46, August 18, 2012 (UTC) Thanks LostInRiverview! I actually think that is something we should pursue. It makes sense if we dont merge to just be affiliated since we're all after the same thing <3 We want to be part of the larger Sims Wiki community, but we want to be able to remain a modular part - and affiliation seems to be the best route to take. Unless anyone else wants to make a huge push for a merger from our Wiki, I believe we have a general consensus. Mndarrr (talk) 23:27, August 18, 2012 (UTC) :Indeed affiliation seems much more appealing. While i see some merit in the idea of merging, i do believe TSW and TSS are not overlapping very much in the areas they cover. If only i'd have known the technical details of implementing the inter-wiki redirects... that would have been my alternative too. -- Napoleon 9th (talk) 09:10, August 19, 2012 (UTC)